THE government is looking into reviewing the prices of affordable housing units by basing them on the median family incomes in the areas they are built, said Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin.

Zuraida said the pricing proposal is aimed at ensuring that a greater number of lower-income earners are able to benefit from public housing, including those living in rural areas.

“We are going monitor the prices of affordable housing according to the median income of the areas.

“That is going to be one form of control, so the developers can’t charge more that the affordability rate of the people in the area,” she said at media briefing in klia2 recently.

Zuraida announced earlier this year that the government plans to build one million new affordable homes in the next 10 years.

Under the Pakatan Harapan’s housing policy, there will be three new categories of affordable housing – RM150,000 and below; between RM150,000 and RM300,000; and RM300,000 to RM500,000.

Zuraida said for the Kuala Lumpur area, the government would consider the salary scale of the people before gauging the prices for the affordable homes.

“The same will be done for the other states because the price varies. Like in Kedah, the average income is lower so the price of the houses will be lowered in accordance with the area.

“There is no interference in terms of market pricing because these homes are for the people. These are not private projects.”

The variation of prices will apply to new projects this year.

“The prices of the homes could be as low as RM90,000 in places like rural Terengganu, Kedah and Kelantan.

“The maximum it will go up is to RM300,000 for certain areas.”

She said developers will have to adhere to the pricing scale set by the ministry if they want to get the projects.

Meanwhile, Bernama reports that PH is set to implement the National Housing Policy 2.0 (DRN 2.0) and two other new policies – National Affordable Housing Policy and the National Community Policy, she said.

Under the affordable housing policy, 100,000 units of affordable houses will be built while 13 projects involving 30,000 units were approved this year.

“Under the DRN 2.0, we’re talking more about smart development where we want houses to be equipped with smart technologies so that people may enjoy a better living, better monitoring and for us to have better management of the property as well,” Zuraida said recently regarding the ministry’s performance for the past year.

Zuraida said focus would also be given to providing affordable homes for young couples and singles through the redevelopment of Bandar Malaysia project announced by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad on April 19.

“We have 10,000 units (of affordable homes) under the project, I want to look into the component for young people as well. We plan to allocate 30% (of the units) to young people, singles and those married with no children. The units are smaller, about 600 square feet… probably with one room and serving as transit homes for them,” Zuraida said.

The project in Sg Besi, Kuala Lumpur, is expected to have a gross development value of RM140 billion. – May 1, 2019.